


No Change in the Air

by FluffyBeaumont



Series: No Change [2]
Category: Dark Shadows (1966)
Genre: Doctor/Patient, Dreams, Guilt, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nightmares, Psychological Trauma, Rape Recovery, Redemption, Sleep, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-12
Updated: 2012-06-12
Packaged: 2017-11-07 13:04:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/431500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FluffyBeaumont/pseuds/FluffyBeaumont
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Willie's having bad dreams and Barnabas wonders why he cares so much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Change in the Air

When Barnabas returned, Willie was half sitting, half lying on the settle, sound asleep. And he was dreaming: his closed eyes moved beneath the thin and tender eyelids, chasing the contents of the dream. He lay with his knees drawn up to his chest, arms wrapped around himself; now and then a brief shiver chased itself the length of his spine. Barnabas reached over and withdrew a knitted blanket from the back of the easy chair and dropped it swiftly and soundlessly over the young man’s sleeping form. He stood for a moment, gazing down at Willie, then turned away and sat down in the easy chair. Willie’s personal comfort wasn’t his affair; what did he care? Willie was after all merely a servant, despite what Julia had said. Julia…damnable woman, always sticking her nose into things that were none of her concern. _He’s probably the best friend you have._ Yes, well… Barnabas allowed himself the luxury of a grimace. That might well be, but he’d be damned if he’d admit such things, especially to Julia. She already divined too much for his comfort.

The mantel clock had just struck four when Willie woke, sat up, and rubbed his eyes. Barnabas was sitting in his usual spot, reading; the candles had burned down to guttering stubs and the fire to a sea of glowing embers. “Barnabas?”

  


”Yes, Willie.” A pause, then the sound of a page turning.

  


”Musta fallen asleep.” He’d been having the strangest dream: he and Barnabas were at sea together, but not on any modern ship. They’d been sailing around Cape Race, sailing in the North Atlantic during a howling gale. Willie had begged Barnabas to come below, but the vampire had refused. He stood on the deck, one strong hand twined in the ratlines, face turned up to the cold salt spray. _Barnabas, you gotta come below! It isn’t safe…Ah, Willie, if you only knew the freedom I feel at this very moment!_ He’d pleaded almost to the point of tears but Barnabas would not be moved, and Willie had gone below in a state of despair. “We were on a ship, me n’ you. Sailing – “ He paused for an enormous, jaw-splitting yawn, noticed the blanket round his shoulders. “Did you cover me up?” Barnabas raised an eyebrow but didn’t reply. “Well,” Willie continued, “if you did, thanks. I was pretty cold.” He pushed the blanket aside and got up. “Guess I’ll go on up to bed now.” Still there was no reply from the vampire. “Okay,” Willie said. He thought about taking the blanket upstairs with him but didn’t; he was pretty sure Barnabas wouldn’t like it. “Good night, Barnabas. He turned and headed for the stairs, feeling suddenly more chilled than ever, now that he was away from the fire’s warmth.

In his bedroom he slipped out of his clothes and into bed quickly, the naked floor boards burning cold against his bare feet. He pulled the inadequate blankets up to his chin and, shivering from somewhere deep inside himself, fell eventually to sleep.

 

Barnabas laid aside the book he’d only pretended to read and went to stand by the dying fire. He seized the poker and stirred the embers, watching as the last of the wood collapsed through the grate in a shower of sparks. The blanket was still on the settle where Willie had left it. Barnabas took it up, meaning to fold it away but instead found himself cradling it against his chest, almost… _soothing_ himself with it. _This is all Julia’s doing,_ he thought. _She’s poisoned me. She’s introduced some foreign element into my body and this is how she intends to control me._ The blanket smelled like the cold outdoors and Willie’s body. His hands clenched in the fabric and he drew it savagely towards him, burying his face in it. He knew the boy’s scent better than he knew anything, better even than his beloved Josette or Maggie Evans. Willie had been the first, the one who freed him, the one who, however unwittingly, had lifted the lid on his near-eternal damnation, releasing him into life again. _And look how you repaid him._ Julia’s voice again, taunting him. _You abused him and enslaved him, beat and tortured him…and for what? To prove your domination? He would have submitted to you willingly, if you had only asked._ “Oh, shut up,” he muttered. He tossed the blanket down on the settle, disgusted with himself. _You realize that what you did to him was tantamount to rape, don’t you?_ She’d actually said this, shortly after she’d so brazenly inserted herself into their lives. Some of what had passed between himself and Willie in those early hours and days, Barnabas had told her himself; the rest she pieced together on her own. _Rape, Barnabas. I hope you can live with that._

Absurd. It wasn’t rape or anything like it…it wasn’t…it wasn’t like that. He’d seen rape. He’d stood in the shadows one hot night in Martinique, watching while three of his fellows held a serving maid and took turns violating her. No, he hadn’t participated. His sin had been one of omission, not commission, but still. He would never forget her tear-stained, pleading face: _Pardieu, Monsieur! Aidez moi!_ By God, sir…help me.

“Barnabas? It’s nearly dawn. You should have the second injection now.”

  


Julia had come up from her laboratory in the basement, bearing the accoutrements of her profession. He’d been so sunk in his own thoughts that he hadn’t even heard her. Was this, too, a side effect of the treatment? Was he losing even his preternatural senses? “Julia. Yes, of course.” He shrugged out of his smoking jacket and folded it carefully over the back of his chair, watched in silence as she injected him.

  


”Where’s Willie?” She tucked the used syringe into her medical bag. “There. That should do it for now. We’ll bump up the regime starting tomorrow night. Think you can handle it?” Her tone was teasing but her concern was real. The therapy was entirely new and Barnabas had insisted she initiate the regimen directly the serum had been distilled. He hadn’t been interested in waiting, nor had he wanted to test the medicine first at a reduced dosage.

  


”He’s gone to bed,” Barnabas replied, buttoning his cuff. “I hope he hasn’t caught chill from being outside in the cold."

  


Julia’s eyebrow crept ever-so-slightly towards her hairline. “Oh?” She crossed her arms and regarded him closely, her head tilted to the side in her typical expression. “Barnabas, that’s twice in one night I’ve heard you express concern about his welfare. This is unprecedented. I’m going to have to write this up for the medical journals.”

  


”You will do no such thing.”

  


”Try and stop me.” She picked up her medical bag and her gloves. “Well, it’s late…or rather, it’s early. I’m going to try and get some sleep.” A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth; he wondered if she were mocking him. “You should go to bed as well…er, you know what I mean.”

  


”Yes, good _night_ Doctor Hoffman.” He turned to the fire, tamping down the last of the embers. The house felt empty now that Julia had gone, but Willie was asleep upstairs, so he wasn’t entirely alone. He left the fire and went silently up the stairs, stopping outside the door to Willie’s room. Without opening it, or venturing inside, he could feel the heat of the young man’s body, hear the timbre of his heart, and there was something else—

  


”No, please, don’t! No, don’t, I promise—“

  


Willie was screaming when Barnabas pushed open the door – sitting up in bed, sound asleep with his eyes open, screaming at something only he could see and hear. Barnabas went to him, wrapped an arm around his shoulders, soothing him, whispering words of comfort and commiseration until Willie relaxed and lay back down. The contents of the dream came to Barnabas, a series of horrific images: a hand coming out of the darkness; a disembodied voice; a ripping, tearing pain riding on a wave of sheer, unadulterated terror. _What you did to him was tantamount to rape._ It wasn’t Julia’s voice this time, but his own.

  


He lay down beside Willie, cradling the young man’s body with his own, spooning their limbs together, holding him. Raw syllables and unformed words pressed against his palate, and his throat was drawn together by an unenthusiastic sorrow. He felt as if he had been flayed, stripped to the bone, derided and exposed for all the things he wasn’t and couldn’t ever be. It would be false to say he saw himself, for what he saw was darker still than that, rife with torment and damnation. He doubted he could ever be redeemed.

  


”…Barnabas?” Willie stirred, turning in his arms to face him. The thin light of the courting candle cast half the young man’s face in shadow, replaced his eyes with hollow pits of darkness. “What’s goin’ on?”

  


”You were dreaming. You’d had a nightmare. I heard you and came in.”

  


”You came in? That’s nice, Barnabas. That’s real nice.”

  


Conscious of his position, Barnabas moved to go, muttering something about it being very late, almost dawn, and he hadn’t meant any impropriety by lying down beside him. The sound of Willie’s voice stayed him. “Hey, Barnabas?” He sounded suddenly shy, his voice suffused with a vast reluctance. “That was real nice. I know I already said that but…” His hand stole to the vampire’s face, his palm pressing against the pale cheek. His heartbeat was thunderous in the room. “Hey, Barnabas…?

  


The vampire turned the hand, pressed his lips into the center of the palm. When he raised his head, Willie was gazing at him, moving closer, and then Willie was too close to see and there was a space of heat and moisture opening over the vampire’s mouth…

  


In the cold and darkness of a late November night, Willie was kissing him.

> _Out of the air a voice without a face..._ (W.H. Auden)


End file.
